Search results for: "Concentration"

  1. Page 63
  2. On Not Being a Victim
     … And the path, everything from right view on down to right concentration: These are all fabrications. Right view means learning to look at things in a certain way, learning to look for certain things. So learn to look for some concentration, look for some stillness, look for mindfulness. Their potentials are there. This is the Buddha’s basic teaching on dhatu , or element or … 
  3. The Power of Intention
     … The central factor in the path is right concentration, so work on this, because it’s right here where things will become apparent. You use your intentions to create the concentration, and then once the concentration is there, it allows you to see the power of intention even more clearly. The more clarity you bring to this, the more your actions do become a … 
  4. A Well-stocked Memory
     … Then, following that, come the factors deal with concentration directly: rapture, calm, concentration, equanimity. But there’s another description in which mindfulness is defined as being mindful of the Dhamma teachings you’ve memorized, that you’ve learned: what you’ve read, what you’ve listened to. Then analysis of dhammas has to do with sorting through what you’ve listened to, to figure … 
  5. Happy to Be Here
     … The Buddha talks about right concentration as being the heart of the path and the other factors as being its requisites, the things that help it along. So if your concentration is having problems, look at the other factors. Start with right view and right resolve, and then move around to the other ones, because they’re all related to this process of learning … 
  6. Breaking the Arrows
     … Then he thought of a time when he was younger, sitting under a tree, and his mind naturally entered concentration. He asked himself: Could that be the way? He decided it was worth trying. So he ended the self-torture, ate enough to regain the strength of body needed to do concentration practice, and from that he developed the mind to the point where … 
  7. The Five Precepts for the Mind
     … The ones that make it hard to get the mind into concentration, they’re bad for you, too. These are things you’ve got to avoid. And try to develop instead the pleasure of concentration. The Buddha calls this the pleasure of form. It’s a pleasure of a higher level. Just being able to be inside your body and inhabit it from the … 
  8. All for the Sake of Freedom
     … It’s going to say, “Well, it may not be perfect but it’s good enough for me.” One of the reasons why we try to get the mind into concentration and learn how to inhabit this sense of the body from within in a way that gives rise to ease and sense of well-being, a sense of really belonging here, is that … 
  9. The Ennobling Path
     … That’s the skill of right concentration. That’s where you sublimate your unskillful desires and you direct them here. There is a phrase someplace in the Canon, I don’t know exactly where, where the different levels of right concentration are called “the sport of the noble ones.” This is where they have their fun. They find their pleasure, they find their sense … 
  10. Keep Things Simple
     … Sometimes you realize, okay, just a bare amount of concentration, a bare amount of mindfulness is all you can manage, so you stick with that. Don’t throw it away simply because it’s not up to your standards. As Ajaan Lee says, “Big things come from little things,” and sometimes very tiny victories can add up. You stay with this breath and then … 
  11. Where You Set Your Heart
     … When we practice mindfulness in the way the Buddha described it, being very careful about where we do focus the mind and where we don’t focus the mind, of course it’s going to lead the mind to right concentration. The instructions for right mindfulness are just that: instructions on how to get the mind into right concentration. In fact, the Thai translation … 
  12. Not the Predictable Thing
     … He kept asking, “What’s the best thing to do with what I’ve got?” Once he got into right concentration, he didn’t just stay in concentration. He asked himself, “Is there knowledge that can be derived from this state of concentration?” The first question he asked himself to gain knowledge was: “How about previous births? Have I been born before?” He saw … 
  13. Dependent Co-arising in Fifteen Minutes
     … Finally, the third good thing to know about dependent co-arising is that it’s not foreign to the practice of concentration. As you get the mind into concentration, you’re actually using these various prior factors. Under the factor of fabrication, you have the breath: What are we looking at right now? We’re looking at the breath. You have directed thought and … 
  14. Joy in Effort
     … When the Buddha singled out three of the most important factors of the path in helping right concentration, they were right view, right effort, and right mindfulness. These are the most important helpmates or requisites for right concentration. These are the factors you want to focus on while you’re meditating: right view, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. They all involve doing things … 
  15. The Need for Right View
     … Now, to do this, you have to develop the factors of the path, from right view all the way through right concentration. The Buddha one time singled out right concentration as the heart of the path, and the other factors as its requisites or supports. Because to see suffering, the mind has to be very still and have a great sense of well-being … 
  16. Detail Work
     … And don’t think that these contemplations would get in the way of your concentration, that too much interest in things outside will become a disturbance. It doesn’t have to be that way. Think of Ajaan Lee: Among Ajaan Mun’s students, he was famous for having the strongest concentration, yet he also had a very inquisitive mind. If he met up with … 
  17. Why We Bow Down
     … And is it really worthwhile to say that these things are not-self, that you’d be better off not trying to lay claim to things? When you fabricate a really good state of concentration, what proof is there to deny that that’s best there is, so that you should maintain what you’ve got and never let it go? After all, there … 
  18. Refreshing
     … They’re the causes for your concentration. When you focus them on one object, like the breath, and you can maintain those three together—directing your thoughts to the breath, evaluating the breath, paying attention solely to the breath and mind together—then the other factors of right concentration will come in, which are a sense of ease and pleasure, along with a sense … 
  19. Different Minds, Different Bodies
     … And you come to realize that the different states of concentration you’re going to gain all have their different uses. So whether it’s the precisely the type of concentration you’d like to get or not, that’s not the issue, or shouldn’t be the issue. The issue should be, once you’ve got the mind concentrated in this way, what … 
  20. Respect for the Training
     … The training is very basic—virtue, concentration, discernment—and in some cases it’s so basic we tend to overlook it. We want to go to the higher Dhamma, things that are more abstract that seem to be more in line with our level of intelligence. As a result, we tend to miss a lot of the really good lessons that can be learned … 
  21. Develop Your Inner Observer
     … It plays a really important role in concentration practice. You get the mind still, and then you watch—because if you start jumping to conclusions or getting impatient, you can ruin the concentration and you don’t gain any knowledge. So your ability to get to this “knower” inside—what the Thais call, phoo roo, or awareness itself—is an important part of developing … 
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